Broken Angels

by Gemma Liviero

What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die. —Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)

Hope is something I still have. I wear it around me like a favorite shawl. I cannot—I will not—die.

I was like a butterfly that did not know how to land, that flitted from one thing to the next. He said that I preferred to float in the air, but that one day, when I finally found my place to land, I would give the whole of myself to someone who was worthy.

You cannot go back once you learn the truth about people’s feelings.

Despite our shared history, we are suddenly strangers, and the short distance between us is an ocean too wide to cross.

I know that to know love, you have to feel pain first. That is when you can truly understand what it is and how to appreciate it. I have felt pain and I know love, yet the people I should have loved more are all gone.

With my head resting against his warm chest, for the first time I was able to forget our titles, our blood.

Though the word is used too casually; is it not? Love is more than just a word. It is something you grow into with time.

Sometimes it takes years to appreciate the good traits, since the bad ones are unfortunately the ones that often define us.